About Us

Our History

The Toe By Toe teaching method was developed over twenty five years. It arose out of the needs of Keda Cowling, a Yorkshire teacher whose abundant dedication and patience were still not enough to teach all of her students to be competent readers. Out of the struggle to meet the needs of these children came the recognition of the role played by dyslexia. Following that recognition came the painstaking development of a system for the teaching of reading, which the authors believe to be unsurpassed in its record of success.

Toe By Toe was first published in 1994 since when it has sold over half a million copies. The reading manual is used in more than 70 different countries including:

  • Bahamas
  • Australia
  • New Zealand
  • Kenya
  • Falkland Islands
  • South Africa
  • USA
  • Canada
  • Hong Kong
  • Cyprus
  • Singapore
  • Ireland
Keda in Toe By Toe class
“Your Toe By Toe reading program has changed the lives of two of my students. They are excited to learn, more confident in their abilities, and proud of their achievements. It is an absolute pleasure to work with this program. I am floored with the results thus far and am excited to see the progress that I know will continue. Thank you for this gift!”
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S.T. (Private tutor) Canada

Keda's Story

Keda Cowling, creator of the Toe by Toe manual, was born in 1926 in West Yorkshire, attending school during the depression of the 1930s. Sadly, like many others, she was denied the chance to take up a scholarship at the local grammar school. Although forced to leave school early for financial reasons, Keda maintained a love for school and her books. She never lost this passion or her burning desire to become a teacher.

At the age of 14 Keda became a ‘mill girl’ at the famous Salts Mill, in Saltaire, West Yorkshire. Later, she became part of the Second World War effort making bomb releases for Lancaster bombers. After the war, she returned to Salts Mill, married and brought up a family.

It was not until the mid-60s - after overhearing a conversation on a bus - that Keda realised she could still fulfill her dream of becoming a teacher. She attended night school, passed the necessary exams and enrolled at the nearby Bingley Training College. Keda finally qualified as a teacher in 1968 at the age of 42. Despite this late start to her teaching career, she would develop methods which would change the lives of thousands of struggling readers worldwide.

Keda with Toe By Toe Book

Toe By Toe - The Early Years

Keda spent almost all of her teaching career at one school - Sandal Road Primary School in Baildon, UK. She also almost exclusively taught just one age group, 6-7 year-olds; the age that most children pick up their reading skills.

This was to become Keda’s great passion - the teaching of reading. Initially, she was baffled as to why a significant proportion of the children in her classes struggled to pick up basic reading skills. To Keda, they were just as bright as the other children but - for them - reading remained a mysteriously difficult skill.

Keda always had a keen and inquisitive mind and this question of why some children had difficulties in learning to read nagged at her. She thought that she had somehow failed these students, so she made an offer to their parents. She asked their permission to teach their children at her home - without charge - at the end of the school day.

As a result of this offer, Keda’s house was soon overflowing with struggling readers. Keda even designed an extension to her house to include a custom-built classroom and persuaded her doting husband Albert to build it.

For the next 30 years, Keda’s house - literally, just a stone’s throw away from the school where she worked - was full of children. Between 4-5pm every school day she looked for ways to improve their reading skills.

Keda's All-Consuming Passion

At the time Keda began her research into children’s reading problems, few people had even heard of the term ‘dyslexia’. Keda became fascinated by the condition and her private research soon became an all-consuming obsession.

She divided the children into two groups. A control group where conventional methods were used, and her ‘guinea pigs’, where Keda tried anything and everything to see what would work.

This painstaking process of trial and error became the genesis of what later came to be known as Toe By Toe. Keda had no idea what was happening in the psychology departments of universities. She simply looked at the reading process and pared it down to the bare essentials necessary to crack the code of this ‘reading thing’.  This is also why Toe By Toe is so refreshingly free of jargon and psychological gobbledygook.

It certainly wasn’t a ‘quick fix’ process. Only after decades of this meticulous approach did Toe By Toe eventually become the fully functioning system we have now.

Keda named the system ‘Toe By Toe’ after a grateful parent commented that she could see how it worked: “Progress by tiny steps – almost one toe at a time…”

"I have dedicated 45 years of my life to developing methods to help people with reading difficulties. During years of unpaid scientific research in the 1970’s, I created a teaching system that provides a progressive solution to reading problems. I call this system ‘Toe By Toe’, as the learning stages and progress are too fine to be called ‘step by step’.

Since its publication in 1994, the Toe By Toe reading manual has taught over 500,000 children and adults how to overcome their reading difficulties.

My research into reading difficulties resulted in two more successful workbooks: Stride Ahead (students improve their reading fluency and comprehension) and Stareway To Spelling (students learn how to spell the 300 most used words)."

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Keda Cowling, Author of Toe-By-Toe

The Success Of Her Life's Work

Keda retired as a teacher at her primary school in 1989. She used her teacher’s pension to finance Toe By Toe and it was finally published in 1994. It has become a phenomenal success. Since publication, Toe By Toe has sold more than 500,000 copies, helping hundreds of thousands of people to overcome their reading difficulties and as a result, dramatically change and improve their lives.

Keda’s ‘Little Red Book’ has now taught literally hundreds of thousands of struggling readers how to make some sense of the world they live in. Toe By Toe is used in more than 20,000 schools around the UK and Ireland, as well as gaining converts in more than a hundred different countries all around the world. This includes primary and secondary schools, Higher Education colleges, basic training institutions, prisons, young offenders’ units and military camps.

Toe By Toe can be found in use in many diverse places worldwide, ranging from Aboriginal prisoners in the deserts of Western Australia, to posh prep schools in the highlands of Kenya, to remote regions of the Yukon in Canada. It is used in the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic and the Gilbert Islands in the South Pacific. Maori school children use it in ‘buddy schemes’ and it is working well with ethnic Chinese children in Hong Kong and Singapore.

Truly, Toe By Toe has a global reach and universal appeal.

A Family Affair

Her sons, Frank and Kelsey Cowling, collaborated with Keda in producing her other published books - Stride Ahead and Stareway to Spelling. Both books plus Toe By Toe are available from Keda Publications.

Frank and Kelsey both have considerable teaching experience, both overseas and in the UK. As well as managing the business, they also continue to teach Toe By Toe, Stride Ahead and Stareway to Spelling in the very same home that Keda opened the doors to her first students more than 45 years ago.

Frank & Kelsey Cowling
Frank and Kelsey with books